Us Stimulus To County Creates 209 Jobs At 12 Million Each

By Ashley Hopkins
The $254 million Miami-Dade has received to date in federal stimulus money has resulted in 209 new jobs for county residents.

While this number is up from the 49 jobs reported eight months ago, it amounts to $1.2 million per job.

These numbers come as a result of a resolution passed by county commissioners in March, requiring staff to estimate the number of jobs generated by the county’s economic stimulus plan program, said Victoria Mallette, director of communications for Miami-Dade.

As all American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects are automatically included in the program, in March the county also began tracking the estimated jobs generated for recovery act projects. In an effort to collect more data regarding job creation, the county commission compiled information from as far back as last October.

While County Manager George Burgess has stressed that job numbers are lagging indicators of the economic climate and has stated that he expects to begin seeing results of the stimulus program this year, job growth does not seem to have increased as expected.

According to statistics provided by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, the unemployment rate for Miami-Dade has increased from 12.8% in June to 13.2% in July, meaning that out of a workforce of more than 1.2 million, nearly 171,000 are out of work. There was an even greater increase between last year and this, as the county’s July 2009 unemployment rate was 11.4%. Florida’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July 2010 was 11.5%, up by one-tenth percentage point over the previous month, meaning that out of a labor force of 9,214,000, some 1,055,000 are jobless.

While the number of hours workers receive has been increasing at a national level, no information is available for the state or county, said Rebecca Rust, chief economist for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. Job counts are up slightly for the state as a whole, but no record compares those receiving full-time hours with those working part-time.

Miami-Dade still could receive $346 million in federal stimulus funds, as the county originally applied for $600 million. While Ms. Rust could not confirm if Florida will be receiving more stimulus funding, she said the state has only spent about one-third of the $10.7 billion it has been allotted, leaving two-thirds to distributed among the counties.